SRθ: Grim Inquiries (2023-2024)

Sit.31: The Drifting of Man

I lay in bed, on some level knowing I was still there, but still, I was dreaming. It was cold, and it was hot, and I was shivering and sweating. Then at once, I was flung between stars into a clearing, in a massive space-borne abode. It was a veritable mansion, empty of all but marble and crystal stone. Everything, from the pillars to the walls and the floors, was white as snow, including the throne at the back of the room, after a long, echoing grand hall that I walked for what seemed like hours. Upon that throne, halo'd by rose's thorns, was a girl who looked exactly like me – with dark hair, and green eyes, in a black dress with thin, transparent sleeves. On her face rested a mask just like mine, but instead of a skull from real human remains, it was simply a façade like the ones we'd used in theatre. She took it off with one hand, and left it hanging on the arm of her throne to stare at me, eyes empty but somehow seeming to move of their own accord. She was chained to the walls by stocks and bonds for what looked to be all eternity, each chain as long as a rope by itself, of crystal and gleaming violet iron. Her hair hung loose in twin ponytails, down to her shoulders and below, with shortened but feathery bangs, and she looked to be about thirteen years old – but like me, she had seen as many hundreds of years as I now had, if not more. Unlike me, she seemed infinitely wise at a glance. She was me, and every life I'd ever have, all in one. She winked, and instantly she was free, a blink of darkness that reappeared wherever she pleased – which was all over the place, in several places at once, all mimicking and taunting and playing with me. One was making faces on the ceiling, one was curtsying in front of me, one was hugging a pillar and calling it like a lover. The locks picked themselves up from the floor and searched for her again, like snakes on the prowl. Now singular again, she hugged me, gave me a quick kiss on the lips, and showed me her eyes as they turned black, into wells of inky darkness. She bled ink from them as worrisome tears, and puked a black squid from her mouth, smiling at me again with blackened teeth – like she was suddenly okay again. In a blink, the squid was gone, and she had moved. Eyes white and green, smile clean, sitting back on the throne while her chains reattached themselves calmly, but definitively.
"They'll never let you go," she said to me, in a voice that came from everywhere.
"Who won't?" I asked, begging for more information – some clue as to my unending astral torment and woe. "Why won't they let me go? Why do I always have to help them? Why am I stuck this way, chained for all time? Why are you allowing this to happen to yourself?! I don't even LIKE this!!"
She laughed. "Because you love them, and you won't let them go either. Because you need them just as much as they need you."
I fell to my knees, finally admitting to myself the weight of my tasks, and the crushing pressure of everything that had befallen me – not just in my dreams, but in my squalid life leading up to them. "I'm not some kind of God... I can't handle everything. Even though I'm trying to be, because I thought it to feel magical... because I thought myself like poetry... I'm just not."
She blinked towards me again, and handed me her mask, taking mine to throw away against the open floor, where it shattered into a myriad of glittering pieces. "You're not God. You're not the devil either, though you will be treated like one... in truth, you're just the middle-man, in charge of souls and the dead. You're The Grim Reaper. Isn't that what you wanted to be? Responsible for someone other than yourself?"
"And yet I keep siring heirs, and never looking back. I'd hardly call myself responsible," I grumbled.
"Well, they say not every planter is a gardener, and not every fucker with balls is a father," she joked. "Maybe you're something else, and you just need to learn pride for it, instead of lingering on woe for so long. If it helps, try writing about it... I hear it's therapeutic."
Then she held up to me a book, black and shiny on its skull-faced cover, with purely black pages. And written in silver ink were the exact words I've been writing to you all along... every last one. For it was not the first time I'd seen this book, I now realize... upon every silver moon, and every night as I dreamt, I'd read upon its pages... only I was the girl, sitting on the crystal throne. Other times, a boy. And I was every me I'd ever seen, all reading this book, and several more like it... all waiting for it to be read by others, as well. So their ciphers could be cracked, their messages decoded, their stories beheld for the lessons learned within. I was ashamed, however, to learn that was not my purpose at all.
I was whisked back through the stars, back to my time, and back to my earth to see upon myself as I slept, and to gain vision of my future to come. I, unfortunately for myself, am not the code-keeper of the Grim Reaper line. Rather, my task is to spell plainly what must be said, so all ye who read upon it can unduly glorify my humble message or berate it – take issue with me all too seriously, or take too lightly what's been written heavy. Some shall even think to steal it, to speak it faltered and weak and harm the cause, and to twist its truth to suit their wretched aims and shower themselves with the gold of fools. But it will matter not. I am the grand spoon-feeder of my audience, who treats them all as newborn babes too simple and foggy of mind to understand what's been said – so that when all's forgotten, and swept again under the rug, and denied, it will be told as all other great secrets are to be "pure fiction". Then I can sink my tale into the soil and mantle, further and further, sinking ever more into despair and conflict, ever deeper and ever hotter in lava's blood, and all the more bleaker still – and then to spring forth and sprout from the core of this earth, becoming into the great green world above a mighty tree from which all other roots, branches, fruits, and seeds will grow. I am the one who is destined to be harmed for my vision, ignored, and ridiculed, and to be made so hardy that nothing can penetrate my bark and shield. But not before I enact some justice, whilst I'm still no more than a simple twig.